While we headed down in our glorious future fed by AI, A movie forgotten for a long time From the years 9, wins the cult status by asking a simple question: are we on the path of idiocracy?
In the tradition of Bill and Ted, Idiocracy, an American science fiction comedy in 2006, represents an average guy transported 500 years in the future to find that he is the most intelligent man in the world. A wrestler is president, people love the “profit” and the largest company in the world is a sports drinking company for sports strategy that has brought humanity to the edge of collapse.
Idiocracy is not a flawless film; His discordant class eugenic and occasional sexism seem dated than his 20th anniversary suggests. But what it does brilliantly is to challenge the hypothesis that the human race is in an undisputed journey towards a higher consciousness.
This is a timely counterpoint to Zeitgeist on the obvious advantages of automatic learning built by large technological companies under the vanity of “artificial intelligence”.
We already see university studies suggesting that models of large languages are linked to cognitive decline, a recent MIT study finding a lower brain engagement in students Use GPT in testing tests.
We have also seen AI chatbots accused of inducing people vulnerable to suicide and joyful predictions on the lock Economics of entry -level knowledge economy What a job to weave as our next intergenerational betrayal.
The question is whether these stupid results are features or bugs of our ecosystem of emerging information. Evidence is mounting, this is the first.
Part A is the OpenAi Economic plan for AustraliaAn embarrassing document for the search for adaptation of the rapid government, investment and minimalist regulation for “the most important economic and strategic opportunity of our time”.
You can drive a truck through the holes in OpenAi’s analysis: $ 115 billion in productivity improvements planned depending on the gross calculations of the hours saved at work, without compromise for the costs of jobs already destroyed.
Carry out this promised openai dividend says that the government should rely on Hunting datacentres to resourcesSocialization of energy and water costs, steam communities and the implementation of new pressures on the grid and accelerated development at the cost of the energy transition.
While our creativity is stolen and reused, exchanging our collective empathy for automated culture, Openai wants us to “rational and update the law on copyright”, with industrial groups that are already growing for a general right to use our data.
But these selfish policies are not the worst of the Openai plan; It is the very fact that this massive company claims to define our future program, defining rather than meeting our collective needs. This principle of conception could represent the inflection point between an intelligent future and an imminent id.
It is true that this technology has an incredible power to synthesize information and challenge the thought of a new and deep way. OPENAI is right to describe technology as “like electricity”, which can illuminate the night sky. But would you get an electricity company to establish electrical safety rules?
The truth is Openai is lower or intelligent: it is a game to dominate new technology in commercial terms for its material advantage, using their generous venture capital as a shield against competitors and a sword against the government to create a political environment that suits them. We are witnessing the next phase of their corporate history.
Chatgpt is a convincing shop, but what happens if it is an intellectual crack? It deceives us to feel smarter, more seen and even loved, while providing the opposite by convincing us to merchant our collective intelligence.
Unless you come back to a real non -profit mission, Openai can never be a partner in good faith. Theirs is an operating model to resist, but it is based on having time, understanding and, yes, leadership to do it intelligently.
In the last episode of my podcast Burning platformsOne of the sponsors of artificial intelligence, Professor Toby Walsh, differentiates the richness of distributed intelligence and the homogeneity of concentrated intelligence that chatbots serve.
High quality data is obtained in unlisted property; It is used with consciousness to solve the problems that humans identify, and not merchant to fill in a market niche.
While technological broligarchs are fighting for global domination, perhaps intelligent money should be on the design and value of small data models, designed for purposes, and not to produce the cup and the rot of the traditional brain which chew less energy and eradicate less jobs.
Due to the power of the technological sector, which all have well paid and well -placed canberra lobbyists, we must also resist. Since he shouted the luddites in my last column, I have been delighted to discover that there are already people who do this.
Ben Zhao, a computer scientist from the University of Chicago, Developed programs such as GlazeWho protects the private photos harvested to form the facial recognition technology, and Nightshade, a filter for artists who encourages AI to see a cat like a dog, like putting ink in a bag of stolen bank checks.
And CloudflareOne of the dominant cybersecurity companies, announced that it would prohibit the robots of web crawlers from scratching the content of their sites without paying compensation to the owner of these sites.
Like the cloudflare CEO, Matthew Prince, says: “I go to war every day with the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Iranians, the North Koreans, probably the Americans, the Israelis, all who try to hack our customer sites. And you tell me, I can’t stop a bare with a C society at Palo Alto?”
In the battle for our future intelligence, we must deploy all the gray matter at our disposal: workers’ intelligence, cultural intelligence, collective intelligence and the power of technologists in the face of artifice.
Spoiler: In the film, the “Brawndo” drinks for “brawndo” athletes extends its domination of the market in electrolytes by developing in agriculture, poisoning the land in search of “profit”. The AU Australia’s opening plan would be a similar triumph of idiocracy.
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Peter Lewis is the Executive Director of Essentials, a progressive strategic and research communications company that undertook research on work in the elections in 2025 and conducts qualitative research for Guardian Australia. He is also the host per capita Podcast of burning platforms
